


Love as An Occupational Hazard

by vials



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Q has a backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 18:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11423919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Q has a secret that's become impossible to ignore, and nothing can prepare James for what it is.





	Love as An Occupational Hazard

It wasn’t the welcome home that James had hoped for, and, truth be told, the fact he had been expecting such a reception only made him angrier. The days where Q would greet him with warmth weren’t entirely gone, but they were rare; spotting patterns was all part of James’s trade, and he soon noticed that Q’s warmest welcomes, where he would be all smiles and kisses, always came when James returned home from assignment on time.

At first, he wondered if Q’s coldness came from simple annoyance, but he quickly dismissed such an idea. It wasn’t in Q’s nature to be passive-aggressive, and indeed Q’s confidence when it came to confronting any issues they had was huge part of the reason why they worked so well. The fact that it wasn’t an act of passive-aggressiveness therefore left James entirely at a loss. He had managed to spot enough to confirm that Q was upset, but then his analysis had failed him. So used to being the primary source of grief among his colleagues, James spent his time trying to work out what it was that he had done – surely merely being late wasn’t bad enough to warrant this? – and totally failed to realised that the problem might be on Q’s end.

It was an oversight that would never stop haunting him.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” James demanded suddenly. It hadn’t been the approach he had planned for. Around them the city was steely grey, the Thames choppy and the same colour as the sky. Rain flicked to the ground around them, specks of a threatening shower that had been holding off all day.

It was in this dreary weather that James and Q had been walking, Q a pace and a half in front of James, his hands shoved into his pockets and his face sullen as he turned to look at him. He looked tired, James thought, and in hindsight he would realise that this should have been his first clue.

“Probably not,” Q said, and despite the exhaustion in his voice, it hadn’t lost its ever so slightly haughty edge. Usually endearing, to his annoyance James just found it infuriating given the circumstances.

“That’s useful,” James said sarcastically, and tried to leave it at that, but Q’s resumed silence forced more out of him. “I can’t believe that it’s just about my being late a lot recently. Aside from a few gripes about kit assignment it’s never bothered you like this before. And being so quiet and moody about it is entirely unlike you.”

More silence, though James noted Q looked tense now. The younger man stare determinedly out to his right, across the unsettled river. Somewhere out on the water a seagull shrieked, and James thought he saw Q’s shoulders stiffen. He took a longer stride and closed the small gap between them, but Q still refused to look at him. It took all of James’s self-control not to reach out and spin him around by the shoulder.

“Tell me what I did wrong,” James said, his voice perhaps too commanding for the situation. “Or tell me to piss off, I don’t know. Just stop doing this. Stop welcoming me sometimes and pushing me away at others. Stop keeping me at such a distance, keeping all these things from me. I can’t stand it. Don’t I have a right to know how I messed things up with you, too?”

Q snorted scornfully, but when he turned to look at James, his eyes were damp and his eyelashes were wet. It was the last thing James expected to see and he found himself taken aback; there was something so raw about the emotion on Q’s face but at the same time James found himself unable to place it. Was it fear, perhaps? Grief? James didn’t know which one was worse.

“You melodramatic sod,” Q said, before apparently realising the irony of his words and giving a weak laugh. “Christ.”

“Tell me,” James insisted.

“It isn’t you,” Q said, and while James had expected to hear such a response, he hadn’t expected to believe it. 

“Then what is it?”

James was unable to keep the unease out of his voice. There was a certain security in knowing he was to blame: he could take responsibility for it, ensure it would never happen again. The fact that this was rapidly revealing itself to be beyond his control was frightening, and already he feared what Q might say. He had sudden images of Vesper, and wondered, briefly, what he would do should Q turn around and tell him he was being blackmailed, or that he was a mole, or some other terrible truth that would again teach him the lesson that it was so dangerous to love.

They were at a deserted stretch of the river now, far away from where any of the tourists would dare to wander in such weather. Q stopped walking and instead turned to lean on the railing overlooking the river and James joined him, the silence broken only by the lap of the water against the concrete below. It was only mid-afternoon, but the clouds and the heavy feel of impending rain made it feel like evening. Across the river, the headlights of buses and taxis added to the effect.

“You worry me, when you’re late back,” Q said eventually. His voice sounded uneven, as though he were barely back on the right side of composure. He turned around and leaned on the rail, his back to the river, and James turned to the side to see him better. It struck him for the first time, in that grey lighting, that there was a heaviness to Q’s features that came not of age, but of suffering.

“Did I ever tell you what I did before I came to MI6?” Q suddenly asked, and in his confusion James assumed it was an entirely unrelated subject. Slightly hesitantly, he replied.

“No, I don’t think you did.”

“I worked for MI5,” Q said simply, either ignoring or simply not seeing the look of genuine surprise James gave him. “I worked for them while still at university, actually, on a semi-unofficial basis. After I graduated I went to work with them full-time, which included all of the training. Surveillance, counter-surveillance, a load of beastly written tests. Driving at speed, pursuits. I’m sure you’re probably noticing that this doesn’t sound like the kind of training a glorified IT guy would receive.”

James felt a thin smile on his face.

“No,” he agreed. “It certainly doesn’t.”

“I was trained as a field surveillance operative,” Q said, and while James had known it was coming from the moment Q had described the kind of training he had received, it still came as a shock. Never had he suspected that Q – _Q!_ – had been an agent, but immediately a lot began to make sudden and unavoidable sense. “And I was very good at it, too. It turns out that I have a talent for noticing things, and on foot I was impossible to get rid of – mainly because my targets didn’t notice me until Special Branch was bundling them into a van with a bag on their head. I never lost a single target.” Q paused, before looking at James with a kind of pain James knew only too well. “I never lost track of anybody. Except for one of my own.”

The wind picked up, bringing with it renewed specks of rain. Neither of them moved, and despite the multitude of thoughts racing through James’s head he knew to stay quiet for now. He was still reeling at the fact it hadn’t even occurred to him before; that he was guilty of the assumption that all field operatives looked like him, acted like him, and that they couldn’t possibly be anything like the studious, quiet, slight man next to him, with his thick dark hair and his glasses and his little thoughtful frown.

No, Q looked nothing like a spy and that was precisely why he had made such a good one. The more James thought about it the more he could see it: Q with his eye for detail, his phenomenal memory, his quick reflexes, the way he seemed to understand James and his fellow agents and know exactly what they needed.

“We had been tailing a suspected terror cell for months,” Q continued, and now James was on the lookout for such things he spotted a familiar tone to Q’s voice – it was his debrief voice, telling all the details but with none of the emotional attachment: a defence mechanism. For the first time, James found himself worried about what Q was going to tell him. “From what we had gathered, they were in possession of explosives and planned to target a local school on the last day of term, when all the children were in an assembly hall watching a film. They knew this because their ringleader was a teacher there. It was a tense time. The cell had been trying to go to ground for days, which always means they’re getting ready. Sure enough, that Friday was the last day at the school in question. We were working all around the clock to find them and keep a tail on them, and they were giving us the runaround.”

Q bit at his nails, and James could sense him trying to find the words. He knew the kind of thing that was coming, and he wished that he could somehow take it away from Q if he just didn’t let him say it.

“As a result, communication was hectic,” Q eventually continued. “Radio use was sporadic and sometimes unsafe. We were running around London for twelve hours that day, trying to keep up. We tried to keep an eye out for one another but sometimes there just weren’t enough eyes. It was a relief when the cell all entered the same vicinity, believing they’d lost us – an underground garage in Wandsworth Town – and anti-terror police moved in to arrest them. We all regrouped for debrief and it was there we noticed we were one short. Victor. I went through training with him. We had been on our first date the week before.”

James felt his heart drop. Q was still staring determinedly ahead, but James could see his eyes were glistening.

“He had been cornered not far from me and I had missed it,” Q said, turning to James with a sad smile. “A small stab wound to the neck was all it took. He bled to death in some alley somewhere and we didn’t even notice. It’s a risk of the job, I know. But that doesn’t make it easier.”

“And that’s what’s going through your head whenever I’m late to the pick-up points,” James said. “That’s what you’re thinking about the whole time.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Q admitted. “And it’s unfair of me to treat you as though it is. I know that. It isn’t malicious, it isn’t because you don’t care about me. I know that too. You didn’t know about any of this, and that’s on me. But sometimes I remember what a risk I’m taking, all over again. Victor’s death weighed heavily on me. I couldn’t go back to field duty and nor did I want to. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things that might have helped – helped Victor survive, helped him get away, helped him defend himself, stopped the cell from knowing we were onto them in the first place. I moved to another department, worked on creating my ideas, but it was still too painful. After telling my bosses about what was going on I was able to secure a transfer to Six, and I’ve been there ever since. But every time this happens I wonder if I’m taking too much of a risk. James, if I lose you, I have nowhere else to run. I’ve spent so long trying to avoid this that at this point, I push you away because it’s all I know how to do!”

Staring at Q, with his clenched fists and teary eyes, James realised it all made sense: Q’s long hours, his dozens of projects, his insistence that all equipment be used properly, returned on time and in one piece, the feedback forms filled out. How hard he worked to fix things, to roll things out on time, how he listened to suggestions and special personalised requests, often working into the small hours of his own free time to make them a reality. James realised then that keeping everyone safe was more than just a concept for Q – and keeping _him_ safe went deeper than James could ever had realised.

“So here we are,” James said quietly. “Two old spies trying not to make the same mistake twice.”

Q gave a grateful smile, which was a relief – James had been fairly sure that trying to reassure Q it hadn’t been his fault would have been useless, because he knew how such thought processes worked.

“Yeah,” Q said, his voice hushed.

“You want to know what an even older spy who’s made even more mistakes thinks?” James asked, and Q looked at him questioningly. “Risks are a part of our trade. We can’t stop taking them when things go wrong, else even worse things will happen. And what if a risk pays off? You would miss out on something so worthwhile.”

Q stared at him for a moment, and then gave a brave smile.

“Is that why we have each other a chance?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“I’m glad we did,” Q said, sniffing, and James reached out and pulled him close. Q huddled against him, trembling for a moment until his breathing settled, and James pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

“Take it from me,” he said softly, giving Q a light squeeze as he pulled him even closer. “No love was ever saved pushing people away. Only wasted.”

Q took a shuddering breath and nodded.


End file.
